It is truly wonderful that the Westchester board of legislators has the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to petition for an Independent Safety Assessment of Indian Point, and they certainly have the right to express their wishes, even if it is more a matter of being politicked from above by Mike Kaplowitz, rather than asked from below (by their constituents) to do so.
However,... I believe what is at question here, can only be answered in part by NRC, even if they double the size of their agency,.. and move the entire NRC staff up to Buchanan to boot for ten or more years to do so.
What is NOT being assessed, is the credibility of promoters' claims (Mr. Kaplowitz among them) that there is actually any useful result for such an ISA, no matter which way it turns out. Sending the same inspectors back to Indian Point one more time, after they leave later this week, can turn up nothing they have not found yet, in some 50 years of inspecting the place. Sending new or unfamiliar inspectors to try to learn 50 years worth of engineering in six months is an invitation to a boondoggle, and a nonsense result. What is being ignored, the huge stinking purple elephant in Mr. Kaplowitz' living room, is the 50 years' worth of evidence that Indian Point is already safe, already up to code, already well inspected, and that inspecting it further does not therefore arise from any real world evidence. Reality has assessed Indian Point since 1955, and found it up to providing clean silent energy safely and without incident. Can politician Kaplowitz, angling for a Spitzer appointment, assess Indian Point any better than the 20 million ratepayers who have happily paid their bills since Eisenhower was our president? I truly doubt it, polymath that Mike K. might be--- real estate mogul, Westchester County whip, and now self-convinced safety & security genius for the northeast region. In fact, I think Mr. K. might just be spreading his talents a bit thin here, and that of late, his interest pretty clearly diverges from the public interest in this (meaning the peoples' interest).
So where do our county legislators turn, for an Independent Sincerity Assessment, of Mr. Kaplowitz' motives, and judgement? Unfortunately, there exists no NRC to regulate overeager personalities, whose command of a board room may just equate to a monster pillaging of the region's affordability--- to pay for a golden-tongued ego's rise to state office. Where do our legislators turn for an Independent Credibility Assessment of dangers that never seem to materialize? To whom can they turn for an Independent Viability Assessment of Westchester's tax rate, and electricity rate structure, once they pull the plug on the common man, for the sake of well-dressed "angry angels" in five years happily dividing up the Hudson shore for more sterile condo projects, while the blackouts multiply, and the stable core of Westchester's population empties out into the south, and the midwest?
In these areas of inquiry, an independent assessment is sorely needed.
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